The originals were certainly rubbish and needed revision. Your objections
to the revisions need to be explained.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 10:11
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
As I see it, your clarifications are even more nonsensical than your
original statements.
"Science is the representation of reflections on practical labour
activity rather than on social activity."
"Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and
of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that
is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and
the real."
This is pure Ilyenkov. He uses this argument to explain how
ethical/cultural descriptions are given the status of statements on Nature.
For example a statement that nature provides man with a natural calendar in
the yearly solar and lunar cycles, a natural compass in the North star and a
clock in the revolution of the zodiac and the daily changes of position of
the sun are all pseudo-scientific statements about nature that accord to
humanly created instruments the status of natural phenomena. On the one
hand they accord to nature the tool-making faculty of man and on the other
anthropomorphize nature imparting to it the purposes of men.
"Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the
persistent survival of such "semantic substitutions"; indeed, when we are
talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language
of natural science, the "language of science" with its established and
generally understood "meanings". It is this, specifically, which forms the
basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously
identifies "nature" with the "language" in which people talk and write about
nature.
Paragraph 54: It will be appreciated that the main difficulty and,
therefore, the main problem of philosophy is not to distinguish and
counterpose everything that is "in the consciousness of the individual" to
everything that is outside this individual consciousness (this is hardly
ever difficult to do), but to delimit the world of collectively acknowledged
notions, that is, the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture
with all its stable and materially established universal patterns, and the
real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these
socially legitimised forms of "experience". (Ilyenkov The Concept of the
Ideal 1977)
The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls the "whole socially organised world
of intellectual culture" and the "real world as it exists outside and apart
from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of "experience." can
only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed
concepts or ideas of the tribe and the concepts formulated by reflecting on
practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried
out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of
production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations
relative to their purposes.
"the representation of scientific knowledge involves "hijacking" the mode
of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories regarding
the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas
through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at
hand."
Let's put it this way. When we produce scientific theory the rational
process for reflecting upon labour activity, i.e. the dialectical process
and the tools we use to describe the outcomes of thought to others, i.e.
language forms are exactly the same used by the idealist philosopher in his
investigation and proclaimations concerning the ethical life and by the
theologian in his construction and revelation of the true nature of god.
The essential difference is in the subject of our rational activity and,
social expression.
Ilyenkov (and I suggest Marx as well) argue that the ideal originates as a
tool for regulation of social life and only later is appropriated (hijacked
may be too strong a word) to the purposes of describing material reality
(labour activity).
Does that help?
Utter nonsense! You started out with something original to say and now
you're sabotaging your own efforts with this gibberish.
At 10:46 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 10:17
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
What in bloody hell does this mean?
At 09:32 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote:
Science is founded as ideas, but unlike Hegel's ideal (which as Marx put
it is "as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in
the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a
thing as an object") Science is the idea as a reflection on practical
labour activity rather than on social activity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, wrote this in a hurry. It should read:
Scientific knowledge is represented in the form of ideas, but unlike the
ideal (which as Marx put it is "as nothing else but the form of social
activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human
creativity represented as a thing as an object") Science is the
representation of reflections on practical labour activity rather than on
social activity.
Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and
of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that
is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and
the real.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That is to say, in Science the idea is "hijacked" to formulate theories
regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization
of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the
work at hand.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This should be rewritten to read:
That is, the representation of scientific knowledge involves "hijacking"
the mode of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories
regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of
ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work
at hand.
Oudeyis
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